ABC The Tavern in Cleveland serves up good beer and inexpensive, creative sandwiches

I have a confession: I am a cheapskate at heart. So it did not take long for my penny-pinching side to form a warm bond with ABC The Tavern, a classic long bar in the neighborhood of Cleveland's West Side Market.

One look at the menu -- where everything costs $7.75 or less -- or the price of a pint of draft Labatt's ($2 before 7 p.m.), and my inner Scrooge started smiling. Cheap is one thing. Cheap and good is better. ABC delivered with fresh and creative bar snacks and sandwiches.

My wife and I started our first visit on a Friday evening with lamb quesadillas ($7.75) and a Tavern Salad ($6). Ground lamb, served in a crisp pita, burst with a variety of spice flavors, complemented by feta, spinach, tomato and cucumber sauce toppings. An order of shoestring french fries (ABC prefers frittes ) was included, no charge, with the quesadilla (and just about everything else on the menu).

The large salad was similarly Greek in style. Lettuce was topped by tomatoes, feta, cucumbers and a simple, zippy lemon vinaigrette.

Peggy TurbettThe Lamb Quesadillas at ABC The Tavern

I was a little worried about the freshness of my shark sandwich ($7.75) when the server told us I was getting one of the last pieces. My concerns were unfounded. The blackened shark was fresh and firm, served on a bun topped with pineapple salsa, onion "frizzles" and spicy red-chile aioli. My wife's slow-roasted pulled chicken sandwich ($6.75) came with a choice of jerk seasoning or barbecue sauce. She chose the jerk sauce, heavily seasoned with cumin.

On our return visit, joined by two friends, we picked the daily special for an appetizer, five-cheese spinach dip with house-made nachos ($7). The warm chips were nicely nongreasy, but the dip was bland; it needed more cheese flavor to compete with the floury, white-sauce base, and there was almost no spinach.

But then we were blown away by our two sandwiches. My wife's house-cured pork belly BLT ($7.75) was nothing short of perfect, if your idea of perfection allows for a serving of pig fat. The satiny fat and savory meat ended up tasting like a hybrid of bacon without the heavy smoked and salty flavors and a luscious, concentrated roast pork. The Atomic Dog ($5.25), a ¼-pound beef frank, tasted as much like a sausage as a hot dog. The big wiener was stuffed with finely diced, moderately hot jalapeno peppers, wrapped with bacon and deep fried, then topped with chile aioli for another layer of heat. Definitely a guilty pleasure.

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Our seafood-loving friend was disappointed when she found out the kitchen was out of both the seafood items on the menu -- Salt & Pepper Calamari with chile lime sauce ($6.75) and shark. With no fish to be had, she ordered the pulled chicken sandwich, which was very good, but for some reason, her frittes were wildly oversalted.

With nine appetizers, a salad and seven sandwiches, the menu is fairly limited. But the bar more than makes up for any lack of food diversity with a terrific selection of microbrew craft beers. Many of the 70 beers in stock were foreign to me, but with a little help from the bartender, I found some tasty food pairings.

ABC could have easily earned a three-star rating for its value, quality and creativity if not for those glitches. But any place I can get a great sandwich, fries, a pint of beer, play four games on the bowling machine and still have tip money left from my $10 bill gets four stars on my Scrooge-o-meter.

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